Holocaust Survivor Roman Kent Honoured with the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
On 22 May 2014, Holocaust survivor Roman Kent was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. German Consul General Busso von Alvensleben presented the award at a ceremony in New York City for Mr. Kent’s "unparalleled efforts in serving fellow survivors and keeping the memory of the Shoah alive".
German Consul General Busso von Alvensleben and Roman Kent. Photo: Jörg Windau.
Roman Kent. Photo: Jörg Windau.
Mr. Kent, a great friend and supporter, has contributed greatly to many activities of The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme. Always present at the Programme’s events, Mr. Kent introduced Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissman Klein at the first Holocaust Memorial Ceremony held in the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York by the newly established Programme in 2006. In 2012, Mr. Kent was also the keynote speaker at an event to introduce the IWitness learning and teaching tool organized by the Programme and the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education at United Nations Headquarters in New York. IWitness is an interactive online application which provides a searchable collection of video testimonies of Holocaust survivors, along with educational tools and supporting resources for students. Twelve classes from secondary schools in the New York metropolitan area were invited to create a research project using IWitness and meet Mr. Kent personally.
Roman Kent (right) reads the UN Charter as his granddaughter lights a candle in remembrance
of the 6 million victims of the Holocaust. UN Photo/Mark Garten
Mr. Kent, who serves as President of the International Auschwitz Committee (IAC), also provided valuable suggestions for the visit of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s visit to Auschwitz Birkenau – German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945). Mr. Ken’ts life-long friend Marion Turski, Vice-President of the IAC, played a pivotal role in the visit when he shared his story of survival as he accompanied the Secretary-General on a tour of the camp.
Mr. Ban is flanked by Yisrael Meir Lau (left), Holocaust survivor and Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, and Marian Turski, also a survivor of the Holocaust and Vice-President of the International Auschwitz Committee. UN Photo/Evan Schneider
As President of The Jewish Foundation of the Righteous (JFR), Mr. Kent enthusiastically lent his support to a partnership that the Holocaust Programme established with the JFR to produce its Rescue Posters, teachers' guide and student hand-outs in English, French, Russian and Spanish for use in educational activities organized by the United Nations Information Centres around the world. Stories of the individual rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust accompany the posters, which convey the values of self-sacrifice, integrity and moral courage, offer a universal lesson on the importance of the preservation of human dignity and the protection of human rights.
Upon accepting the award from the Consul General, Mr. Kent mentioned how his time in the concentration camps influenced his life and how he was able to rise above that experience to build a future with his wife Hannah, who was also imprisoned as a young child in Auschwitz. In reflecting on the transition that Germany has made from Nazism, he noted that “both of us, survivors and the present generation [of young Germans], do not want our past to be our children’s future”. Mr. Kent, who played a key role in negotiating reparations for Holocaust survivors that are being paid by Germany, said that he was honoured to receive this award and expressed his appreciation for the path of remembrance and moral acceptance of responsibility that Germany has taken since the since the era of the Nazism. “It must be commonplace to oppose anti-Semitism and xenophobia, racism and extreme nationalism”, he said.
Roman Kent with his wife Hannah and family members. Photo: Jörg Windau.
Mr. Kent was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1920s. After Hitler’s invasion of Poland, he spent the war in the Lodz ghetto and then in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen and Flossenbürg, where he was eventually liberated by American soldiers. He arrived in the United States in 1946 under the United States Government’s “Displaced Persons Act”. He continues to work on behalf of his fellow survivors as Chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Treasurer of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany.
Roman Kent with Kimberly Mann, Manager of the UN Holocaust Programme,
and David Marwell, Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Photo: Jörg Windau.
Roman Kent acceptance speech, 22 May 2014
Speech honouring Roman Kent, 22 May 2014